Button retired from Formula 1 at the end of the 2016 season as a world champion, a 15-time winner, and one of the leading lights of his generation.
His post-F1 career, dabbling in all sorts of racing but most prominently in endurance racing, has not featured the same highlights. No Le Mans win for Button, for example, unlike his former McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso.
Also unlike Alonso, Button will not be remembered as an all-time F1 great. But that’s not to say he was not capable of greatness – he very much was.
His world title with Brawn in 2009 is one of F1’s great fairytales.
The team looked set for the scrapheap when owners Honda pulled out of F1 at the end of 2008. But team boss Ross Brawn knew the car they had built was a good one, and he fought to keep the team alive over the winter.
Six wins in the first seven races followed, and although Button had a major wobble in the second half of the season, and did not win again, he got himself together in time to clinch the title with a superb comeback drive in Brazil.
Button had the courage and confidence to move to McLaren for 2010 to take on Lewis Hamilton, and acquitted himself well, scoring more points over their three seasons together, even if Hamilton was undoubtedly the superior driver on balance.
It was in that era that Button’s greatest performances came, most famously his remarkable win in Canada in 2011, when he came from last to first in the final 30 laps of the longest grand prix in history.
There were other times when he was on a level beyond his rivals, most often in mixed conditions, when he had an almost supernatural feel for the changing grip levels.
As an all-round package, he did not have the depth of skill and consistency of Hamilton and Alonso. But at his best, he could beat them fair and square. And very few can say that.
